Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Jon IV, ASOS

Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Jon IV, ASOS

Game-of-Thrones-3x06-The-Climb

“In the Seven Kingdoms it was said that the Wall marked the end of the world. That is true for them as well. It was all in where you stood.”

Synopsis: Jon Snow and Ygritte climb the Wall.

SPOILER WARNING: This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all Song of Ice and Fire novels and Game of Thrones episodes. Caveat lector.

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Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Arya V, ASOS

Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Arya V, ASOS

bagonhead

“They can’t hurt me, they’re dying. She took her cup from her bedroll and went to the fountain.”

Synopsis: Arya and the Brotherhood Without Banners visits Stoney Sept, where they debate the ethics of the death penalty and whether Gendry should bone his half-sister, before Arya meets someone from her past.

SPOILER WARNING: This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all…

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What exactly is the shavepate. I never understood his character

Skahaz mo Kandaq is a former member of the Ghiscari nobility who, in order to show his devotion to the new regime and his abjuration of his former status (since the Great Masters of Meereen characteristically wear their hair in fanciful updoes), shaves his head. He is the leader of a group of ex-nobles who share both his hairstyle and his politics.

To follow along with my Reconstruction analogy: if the Unsullied represent black Union soldiers and the freedmen represent, well, the freedmen, the Shavepates represent:

“…a very specific historical counterpart, the so-called “scalawag.” Disparagingly named after a kind of runty horse, the scalawags of American Reconstruction were Southern white unionists – residents of the mountainous regions of West Virginia, East Tennessee, the western Carolinas, and Northern Alabama who had resisted secession from the outset, as well as Southerners from other regions who had turned their backs on the Confederacy during the war (through draft resistance or desertion) or after the war (most famously the former Confederate General James Longstreet, who would go on to lead African-American state militias against the paramilitary “White League” in Louisiana).”

Skahaz has something of a Longstreetish parallel, as the leader of the Brazen Beasts who combat the Sons of the Harpy – a parallel to the state militias who tried (usually unsuccessfully) to combat white terrorist organizations like the White League or the Klan. However, in his personal politics, Skahaz is more of a Robespierre stand-in, pushing Dany to adopt ever more militant policies (from torturing suspects to taking hostages to conducting reprisal killings) in response to the ongoing terrorist campaign against her new regime. 

Unlike many ASOIAF commentators, I don’t think Skahaz poisoned the locusts. At the same time, I absolutely believe that Skahaz is taking advantage of the situation to try to regain the power he lost following Hizdahr’s rise to power, and to try to complete the revolution that Dany left unfinished. To that end, I’m sure that, while Barristan (and Victarion and Tyrion) wins the Battle of Fire outside the walls of Meereen, Skahaz will solve the problem of the Sons of the Harpy and the threat of counter-revolution by putting the entirety of the Great Masters (including the child hostages) to the sword. Whether he’ll survive Ser Barristan’s reaction, I don’t know. 

As I’ve said before, the Shavepate is not a nice man, nor a good man. But he’s also not wrong about what’s going on in Meereen. 

Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Sansa III, ASOS

Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Sansa III, ASOS

“Sansa tried to run, but Cersei’s handmaid caught her before she’d gone a yard.”

Synopsis: a pre-teen girl is forced into marriage with an enemy of her family and for some reason people think she is the bad guy.

SPOILER WARNING: This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all Song of Ice and Fire novels and Game of Thrones episodes. Caveat lector.

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Vox Populi, Vox Deii: Elections in ASOIAF, Part II

Vox Populi, Vox Deii: Elections in ASOIAF, Part II

Introduction

For his second foray into electioneering in AFFC, George R.R Martin clearly decided to go with a simpler model that would (among other things) require less math than the repeated ballots of the Night’s Watch, one that harkens back to the elections and democratic processes of the (early) Middle Ages.

As I talked about in Part I, the Althing of Iceland dates back to the 10th century…

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Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Jon III, ASOS

Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Jon III, ASOS

jon ygritte

“His guilt came back afterward, but weaker than before. If this was so wrong, why did the gods make it feel so good?”

Synopsis: “Oh sweet mystery of life, at last I’ve found you…”

SPOILER WARNING: This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all Song of Ice and Fire novels and Game of Thrones episodes. Caveat lector.

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Why do you think monarchy has lasted( and is still here) for so long considering how flawed It is!?

Good question!

I think part of it has to do with hegemonic ideological power. To quote myself:

“Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist theorist, coined the term “cultural hegemony” (although ideological hegemony also works) as the idea that the ruling class imposes the prevailing norms on the rest of society, which are then believed to be natural, inevitable, benevolent, etc. 

This makes revolution more difficult, because those oppressed by the system don’t yet see their suffering as injustice (as opposed to bad luck, or the will of God, etc.) and can’t imagine a world organized differently than it is. Hence why Gramsci argued that intellectual liberation was necessary for political liberation, or why E.P Thompson argued that class is a process of people creating a new world-view (rather than just a result of material forces). 

In a post a while back, I linked this idea to Steven Lukes’ idea of the three faces of power. Lukes talked about the three faces of power as decision-making power (formal state power), agenda-setting (the ability to decide what’s within the realm of legitimate debate, what is considered a “problem” and what isn’t), and ideological power (the ability to influence other people’s thinking, even when that thinking is against their interests). For example, we can see the third face of power in the fact that, even though Wat Tyler had seized London, he still felt that he needed King Richard to give the commons a charter of liberty and trusted that the King would keep his word that he would issue one and his word that Wat Tyler would not be harmed during a parlay.”

So if the dominant ideological framework of your culture is that kings are chosen by God and that rebellion against them is a sin, you need a lot of ideological lifting power to get people who are being actively oppressed by the monarchy to rise up against it. Hence why so many peasant rebellions from 1381 to the Bauernkrieg drew on religious justifications for rebellion, because the only thing above the king is God. 

But an even bigger ideological lift than that is trying to envision an alternative method for organizing political authority if one was actually to succeed in overthrowing the system, especially if there aren’t multiple ideological frameworks available to your culture/time. While monarchy might not be a very good system, like primogeniture it had the advantage of being relatively simple and having fairly universal acceptance. This made it superior than the alternative of chaotic civil war among rival nobles who no longer have any central authority to check them.

And even when there are other models, transitioning isn’t exactly easy, as we can see from the history of revolutions. Not only are other models usually denigrated by the existing culture. political systems require no small amount of learning. 

Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Davos III, ASOS

Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Davos III, ASOS

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“I am the king’s man, and I will make no peace without his leave.”

Synopsis: Davos has his first dialogue with Polemarchus and his second dialogue with Adeimantus.

SPOILER WARNING: This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all Song of Ice and Fire novels and Game of Thrones episodes. Caveat lector.

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